#How 4 families are talking to their kids about racism

Following the police killing of George Floyd and amid the Black Lives Matter movement that it galvanized, parents around the country are wondering how to tackle the tough topic of racism with their kids. The Post spoke to four families, who share their strategies for broaching these difficult but crucial conversations.

Celebrate black culture

For San Antonio, Texas-based psychologist and “parent coach” Ann-Louise Lockhart, 47, of A New Day Pediatric Psychology, discussions about racism began when her two children were young. She had no choice — when her now-7-year-old son, Noah, was just 3, a kid in his preschool told him he didn’t want to play with him because of the color of his skin.

“[It] was really a brand-new experience for me,” says Lockhart, who grew up in St. Croix, where the population is mostly Afro-Caribbean.

But a more serious conversation came last year, when Lockhart took Noah and 10-year-old daughter Zoe, whom she also shares with husband Vincent, 48, to a Texas culture museum.

“They saw multiple groups of people being mistreated and they didn’t understand why,” she says of the exhibits, which showed images of Jim Crow-era artifacts, such as “Colored only” signs. “It was really depressing, but it’s really empowering at the same time,” she says of how black Americans, despite the circumstances, have persisted and triumphed.

When it comes to recent events, Lockhart chooses not to talk about the specifics of police brutality — and prefers to focus on positive things instead.

One figure she’s taught them about is Ruby Bridges, a 65-year-old activist who, in 1960, was the first black student at her all-white Louisiana elementary school.

In general, Lockhart says kids also learn through play — adding that it helps for them to have toys and dolls that show different ethnicities, as well as inclusive books that portray characters from various backgrounds. A family favorite is Miles Morales, the Spider-Man of African-American and Latino heritage who is the hero of 2018’s “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.”

“I choose to … celebrate our culture, our race and where we came from,” she says.

Work hard to keep young black men safe

As a child, now-17-year-old Billy Staack — who identifies as biracial — first learned of the death of Trayvon Martin on the news.

“ ‘What happened? I don’t understand,’ ” Staack’s mother, 51-year-old Judith Insell, recalls him asking about Martin, who was shot and killed at 17 years old in 2012 by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood-watch volunteer. “That started all of our talks about what it’s like to be a black man in America.”

From that point on, the Hamilton Heights mom’s lessons have focused on keeping her son safe in a world that can still be unfair, and dangerous.

“Make sure you have clean clothes on, make sure your hair is neat and tidy and make sure you’re holding yourself in a way to have people feel like you’re not going to do anything,” Insell recalls telling her son when he started walking himself to school at the Community Health Academy of the Heights.

“We continue to have these discussions and unfortunately, until there are … changes in our society, we will have to keep having them.”

They arose again following headlines about the chokehold death of Eric Garner in 2014 and, more recently, after the death of Ahmaud Arbery, who was shot in February while jogging. The latter especially concerned Staack, who runs for the cross-country track team at his high school — and even made him question whether his regular workouts were safe.

“[Staack] loves to go for long runs … and here’s this person who’s doing the exact same thing, he’s a black man and he’s doing nothing wrong,” says Insell. “And he ends up dead … I think it made a huge impact on him.”

Insell says she feels it’s her responsibility to guide and educate her son about race even as he grows up and heads off to college. “You want them to go out in the world and be adults, and caring and contributing citizens — but always in the back of your mind is this fear that something bad can happen,” she says.

Emphasize inclusion

Seven-year-old Grayson Hurd has had a front-row seat to the recent Black Lives Matter protests from his window in Brooklyn Heights.

“He’s a very inquisitive kid,” says mother Lisa Roberts Hurd, 47. She says that Grayson has been asking questions about the protests that have taken place at nearby Borough Hall. Together with her wife, 47-year-old Kristin Hurd, the couple have chosen to explain it to Grayson using simple terms: For instance, “Some people don’t like other people for the color of their skin,” says Lisa.

“Now he understands that, unfortunately, some people see that difference as not OK — and that’s not OK [with us],” Kristin says.

To the Hurds, teaching their young son about inclusion is an important job of being a parent. As an LGBTQ family, “we live it,” says Lisa.

Lisa and Kristin, both of whom are white, choose to raise their child in New York City, where Grayson hears different languages each time they walk him down the street, and where they have a racially and ethnically diverse group of friends.

And they’ve made an effort to stack his bookshelf with stories that promote their values. One is Todd Parr’s “The Family Book,” which teaches readers to embrace differences by understanding all the types of families people come from. They also say Grayson has been reading the “Who Was … ?” series of picture books about influential people, such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Harriet Tubman.

Lisa and Kristin believe this combination of experience and education will give their son a solid foundation.

“I have always said if we can raise him to see the world for its rich diversity [and] give him a good moral compass … he will figure out the rest,” says Kristin.

Explain scary current events

“Our whole thing is just being as honest with them as possible — and talking about racism is just a reality,” says 35-year-old West Orange, NJ, resident Alexandra Schrecengost of the discussions she and her husband, Sean, have had with their 5-year-old twin sons, Rome and Troy.

Alexandra is black and Puerto Rican and Sean, 36, is white. They began these conversations earlier this year when the twins learned about Martin Luther King in school. But following the death of George Floyd in May, the subject matter became more sophisticated — and specific.

“We were honest with them, and we said it’s not that all police officers are bad … There are sometimes really great police officers. [But] this is what happened: The police officer put his knee down on the man’s throat,” she says. “We told them honestly what it was.”

Since then, the twins asked to watch Floyd’s televised memorial service, and the family has read the news and followed the story of the protests together. But Alexandra and Sean use other tools, too.

They love Jelani Memory’s “A Kids Book About Racism,” which Alexandra says is a great way “to introduce the concept of [racism], how it makes people feel.”

Alexandra also makes an effort to keep the twins connected to her 89-year-old African-American grandfather. She encourages him to tell them stories from his own life, which include situations where he knew people felt afraid of him because of his skin color.

“It’s a team effort,” she says.

For Alexandra, these are important topics for all parents to cover, no matter their racial background.

“There are people of so many different races and religions, and your kids are going to be confronted with that … once they go to school and once they enter the real world,” she says.